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Immigration: Past, Present, and Future

Crystal Orozco
University of Texas at El Paso

The purpose of this immigration literature review is to be able to understand how immigration is
entitled to the United States of America and help readers understand how it has shaped the
Americans life. Immigration has taken the world to a whole new level of diversity, specially
border countries and cities, making the world a diverse and open minded community.
Immigration is important to the country in many ways, cultural, economic and social. It is
culturally important because new ideas have grown and new traditions were created in America
through immigration, whether it has been legally or illegally. Economically it has grown because
immigrants usually come to start businesses, creating jobs for citizens, and even creating their
own. Socially, immigrants have helped shape America by bringing in new traditions and
cultures.

Immigration thru ought the years has learned to grow and generate a big impact on the
U.S. that it has helped the country be shaped into how it is in present day. Out of all the ways the
Unites States has changed throughout immigration is by helping the economy grow. Immigration
is not only in the U.S. but also all over the world, helping make big changes like social, political,
and economic differences. Immigration is entitled to the University of Texas at El Paso because
the university is located in a border city, leading many immigrant students like Muslims, Asians,
European and Mexicans join the school. The four-topic research question that will be reviewed
will be the following, 1. Do immigrants contribute to the U.S. in a social, political or economic
way? 2. What effect is social media having on students? , 3. How is violence an issue and a
controversy on kids and teens? , and last, 4. Does the immigration status of a UTEP student
affect them from receiving government assistance?
Even if for some immigration may be considered as negative, research and interviews
have shown threw out the years that illegal immigrations has actually helped the economy. We
can see this for example by immigrants bringing new businesses, meaning new jobs for our
citizens. According to the authors Tomasi, S. M., Charles, B. (2010). Three different views on
immigration (p.8) are making several claims throughout the book, though the one that has caused

a bigger impact was how they are trying to develop a methodology or idea. The fact that these
authors are doing research on future laws is a very good idea since the research and
methodologies being created help out future immigrants by preparing them to legally immigrate
to the Country in some time close to present time. This idea was mainly done to estimate the
causes and effects of future immigrants that enter the United States, and how the legislation is
changing future laws. It is important that this idea is taken care of, and idealized wisely. By
bringing future immigrants to the country, the government can turn the U.S. economy into a

better place, since as several may know, the U.S economy is not at its highest point in history
due to the stock market crash which U.S. still has not recovered from. According to the research
done, there is only a certain amount of immigrants who are permitted in the U.S. per year; these
are determined by how beneficial they will be to the United Stated, meaning weather they can
contribute to the economy, cultural interest, etc. The fact that the United States only permits a
certain amount of people who can legally enter the country makes sense because we as
individuals are always trying to lean forward situations or people who will have a positive
impact on us. The people who dont contribute in a beneficial way we tend to push them away,
now it only makes even better sense that such a powerful country is doing it as well. According
to the news article Why do immigrant neighborhoods have low crime rates? by Garibay, L. Y.
(2015). In todays debate over the immigration policy in the United States, many argue that
arrivals from other countries have a negative impact on the country and even contribute to rising
crime rates. At The University of Texas at El Paso, a team of researchers is working with new
data to prove that in fact, the opposite is true. Meaning that the immigrant neighborhoods that
were being researched presented lower crime rates rather than the ones who were mainly citizens
of the states. It has always been a mistaken and confused notion among some regular citizens,
politicians and even some law enforcement individuals have an image of non-citizens that when
they come, they only come to the country just to cause problems and eradicate violence.
According to the author J.D. Villalobos, (2011) Promises and human rights: The Obama
administration on immigrant detention policy reform. Race, Gender and Class, 18 he is
evaluating the Obama administration efforts towards reforming U.S. immigration detention
policies. Over the past decade, immigrant rights advocates have increasingly criticized certain
policies of the U.S. according to the book, U.S. immigrant detention centers are being

increasingly criticized for the mistreatment of detainees and substandard, sometimes fatal
medical care, meaning they are violating the human rights of the non-citizens who enter these
facilities. In order for this situation to stop the Obama administration should start reinforcing the
standards that are being put into these facilities with penalties that charge the workers in charge
of these non-citizens in order to have better management and monitoring of U.S. detention
facilities. This genre connects and relates to .the question previously introduced on How is
violence in television an issue and a controversy on kids and teens all the issues that are being
presented in these detention centers are considered violence and could be in a way
misunderstood by younger minds that know about these issues. Younger audiences can take this
situation as an excuse to start mistreating immigrants (non-citizens) that come to the country and
take advantage of their immigration status since they are seeing the issues that are going on so
younger people think it is completely normal for them to treat others unequally. In addition,
according to the author Tamer M. (2014) public schools in the U.S. have only serve as
institutions of oppression. Some even argue that for many immigrant students, schools serve to
subtract from education rather than to add onto or to build on a childs experience. With this
being said, we can infer that also besides the negligence these students are receiving it is a type
of violence they receive from the education they are receiving. Even if this violence is not
presented in a physical way or form negligence in here is presented as emotional violence in the
end. This again just proving that violence is being a controversy that is not really talked about or
mentioned in between immigrant students. Another reason to prove that violence is a big
controversy on immigrant students is that according to: Fernandez, L. and Amastae, J. (2007)
Immigrant students are also facing a language barrier within schools in the U.S. The majority of
these schools have documents or certain papers that have to be sent out to parents with important

messages (such as permission slips for field trips) that are not being translated to their native
language, also they only have teachers who only speak English, making it difficult for
immigrants students and parents to communicate effectively with the educators. In addition,
there are some issues when it comes to the parents trying to communicate with the schools when
it comes to conferences, open houses, and other parent involvement activities.
According to Mareie Hutchinson Securing the Borders: Debating Immigration Policy in
U.S. History Securing the Borders: Debating Immigration Policy in U.S. History (2009)
The article presented by Hutchinson is a collage of various ideas from the past showing the
mentality of great figures about immigration. Great names like the first president of the united
states George Washington are quoted to show that he was in favor of the U.S in regards of
welcoming immigrants, he gave this speech to the volunteer association of Ireland. Others like
Carl C. Brigham, who was a professor of psychology at the University of Princeton opposed to
the idea of immigration. He believed that if immigrants started breathing between the future
Americans would be dumber than the current Native Americans. All these ideas shown in the
paper prove that since long time ago there has been pros and cons of immigration according to
other citizens of the country. Now, according to some readings and arti this person has
influenced many social media followers, including students. With this being said it means that
social media is having a major impact on students who read about and follow people who are
anti-immigrants so they become majorly influenced, especially students who are not as much
known in the world so since they dont have experience they get influenced easily by older
people.
A question that is often being asked to the University is whether immigrant students are
able to receive federal student aid in order to pay for their university tuition. According to the

web page Federal Student Aid, By An office of the U.S. department of education, students are
able to receive financial assistance from the government as long as they complete some
requirement. These are the following requirements: being a refugee, asylum Granted, CubanHaitian entrant, or a parolee (meaning you must be paroled for at least one year, must be able to
provide you are in the U.S. for the intention of becoming a U.S. citizen or at the least a
permanent resident.) Many people who dont know this, mainly non- citizens never end up
finding a way to pay for college because they think and believe that since they are immigrants
they wont be able to receive the benefits as if they were U.S. citizens. It is very important people
are informed about this information since receiving an education is so important and a necessity
in this era. Meaning if one does not have an education one is less likely to succeed or be able to
provide for himself rather than someone who has gone to school and earned a degree. On the
other hand, even if non-citizen students are able to receive government assistance like financial
aid, some are not in accordance and do not agree with this idea. According to James Hirbyand,
writer of Why is it that Illegal Aliens Get Free Food Stamps, Health Insurance and Pay No
Taxes? is against immigrants receiving government assistance without having them show any
way to prove they can legally be hear. But why? It is very normal that regular or born U.S.
citizens would only get mad since they have to be working for what they own while other just
come and take it. (according to the article) Apparently and according to some politicians,
immigrants mainyl come to the country to destroy the economy by taking jobs that do not
correspond to them, they come to steal, they come to kill, and cause violence. But, is this true?
Like in some previous paragraphs mentioned, it has been proven by a conducted survey that
immigrant neighborhoods are the ones that present the less cases of violence rather than the

neighborhoods that are mainly full of U.S. born citizens so really are immigrants really the
criminals people claim they are?
At last, it is proven that immigration has taken a huge role in the history of the United
States, meaning immigration roots have come from all over the country to plant their little seed
in the U.S to make it grow into the beautiful country it is now. Therefore, it should be never be
forgotten from what values the United States of America was built upon.

Bibliography
Barbour S. , (Ed.). (1975). WHOM HAVE WE WELCOMED?: The adequecy and quality of
united states immigration data for policy analysis and evaluation (first ed.)
Fernndez, L., Howard, C., & Amastae, J. (2007). Education, Race/Ethnicity and out-migration
from a border city. Population Research and Policy Review, 26(1), 103-124.
Gabriela. (2016, Message display at the US/Mexico border. Message Display at the US/Mexico
Border,
Garibay, L. Y. (2015). Why do immigrant neighborhoods have low crime rates? Retrieved
February, 2016, 2016, from http://news.utep.edu/?p=29309
Hutchinson, M. (2009). Securing the borders: Debating immigration policy in U.S. history. OAH
Magazine of History, 23(4), 46-49. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40506015
Jimnez, L., Matus, J., Kern, S., & Jones, J. (1996). Monitoring the migra: A borderwide effort
to hold immigration police accountable for misconduct. Race, Poverty & the Environment,
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UTEP launches border security, immigration program(2008). immmigration prof.

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Villalobos, J. D. (2011). Promises and human rights: The obama administration on immigrant
detention policy reform. Race, Gender & Class, 18(1), 151-170. Retrieved from
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